HelloFresh Review: Is It for You?

I bring you reviews of the latest household goods services with an eye for budget and practicality.

HelloFresh Review

There are a lot of meal kits out there, how do you know what’s right for you?

Learn about HelloFresh in my review including what it costs, what the selection is like and how good the food is. It’ll help you decide whether they’re right for you before you spend your money.

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5 out of 5 stars from 1 rating of HelloFresh

Chicken fajitas was one recipe option from HelloFresh. | Source

Meal Kits: How It Works

HelloFresh is a meal kit delivery service. It’s a weekly subscription that delivers all the ingredients you need to make a recipe at home. If you haven’t had a subscription to a meal kit service before you’ll want to know how it works.

Subscription

You start an account with HelloFresh and give your delivery address and payment information. There’s always a sign up discount available so make sure to use a coupon code here. More on that in Coupon Codes below.

Meal Plan

Next, you’ll choose a meal plan. HelloFresh has a Classic plan, a Vegetarian option and a Family plan. You can read more about each option on their website.

At this point you also pick the number of recipes you want per week and the number of people eating. That determines the cost of your plan. Usually more recipes and people mean a cheaper cost per meal but that’s not always the case. See more about pricing below under Is HelloFresh a Good Deal?

You can change the number of recipes and people later in your subscription if you change your mind. So start off with fewer recipes per week if you’re not sure.

Weekly Delivery

You select the day of the week the food gets delivered. Whatever works for you, maybe it’s a Tuesday.

Then, you’ll get an email when the recipes for the next delivery are available for you to choose. For your first box those will be ready for selection right away.

You tell HelloFresh which recipes you want and then they’re shipped. Your insulated box will arrive at your front door on your designated day.

HelloFresh is a subscription but you can cancel it, edit it, or just skip a week anytime you want.

Vegetarian Plan

We eat meat regularly but we did switch to the Veggie plan for one week to try their recipes. Obviously, you get more vegetables to make up for no meat so I liked that. The produce they sent us was very fresh. It was a good introduction for me in making some vegetarian meals I wouldn't have tried otherwise.

If you stick to a vegetarian diet HelloFresh would be a great meal kit for you.

Vegan Alternatives to HelloFresh

HelloFresh does not have a strictly vegan option. Some of their vegetarian recipes are also vegan but that’s not always the case.

If you are a vegan looking for a meal delivery plan, HelloFresh won’t be it for you. But there are alternatives. Purple Carrot offers a vegan only plan.

HelloFresh Meal Selection

Every week you can choose which meals you want in your next shipment. There’s usually a dozen available recipes and you pick the two, three or four you want (depending on your meal plan) that week.

I was pleasantly surprised by their meal selection. I never felt like I was choosing things I didn’t really want to make and eat. I went outside of my comfort zone with at least one recipe per week to learn something new.

Pork Tenderloin, a recipe option for one of the weeks of my HelloFresh subscription. | Source

Is HelloFresh a Good Deal?

So, is HelloFresh a good idea if you’re trying to stick to a food budget? Can it help you save money on groceries in the long-run?

Let’s look at how much a typical HelloFresh meal costs to answer this question. And for reference I like to compare it to other meals we typically do like pizza delivery or home-cooked meals. This will give you an idea how much you’re paying for the luxury of pre-picked and delivered ingredients.

Source

Meal

Servings

Total Cost

Cost Per Serving

Sit Down Restaurant

2 Meals, 2 Drinks, Tip

2

$28.80

$14.40

HelloFresh

Classic Plan (2 people, 3 recipes)

6

$55.00

$9.17

HelloFresh

Family Plan (4 people, 3 recipes)

12

$97.00

$8.08

Pizza Delivery

Large Pizza, Delivery Fee

3

$20.00

$6.67

Grocery Store

Spaghetti w/ Ground Beef

2

$5.50

$2.75

Coupon Codes

HelloFresh and Blue Apron advertise a startup deal for your first few boxes. Usually it’s a certain dollar amount off your first 3 or 4 boxes. This is automatically added.

Other coupons show up in the mail or you might get them from your friends for $60 off your first box. Jump on those when you find them, it's a deep discount. But using those precludes you from the automatic discount, which right now is $80 off total.

Who Should Try HelloFresh?

Now that I’ve cooked with HelloFresh and Blue Apron and talked about different food delivery with my friends and coworkers I have a better idea of who these services are really great for.

HelloFresh could be a great idea for these situations:

Anyone looking to expand their recipes and try new styles of cooking

People new to a diet (vegetarian, gluten-free, etc) looking for help and inspiration

Families wanting to focus on meal-time and preparing fresh food

Retired couples that want to cook together but want the convenience of delivered food

A meal kit service can be a catalyst to get you or your family interested in cooking healthy meals.

How Often Do You Cook at Home?

Why We Cancelled HelloFresh

Okay, to round out my review I want to share how long we stuck with HelloFresh and why we don’t use them anymore.

We used HelloFresh for 6 weeks, with a total of 4 orders (we skipped two weeks). Then I cancelled it because for us after we used up the discount it was more than we want to spend on food regularly.

For how much they cost, they took more work than I was expecting. The pre-portioned ingredients didn't seem to cut out much time compared to working with something at the grocery store.

I'm definitely glad I tried them because I learned new recipes and got to use new foods. Of the eight recipes we got from them, three of them I still make regularly. In larger batches and with much cheaper ingredients.

Share Your Review

Once you've tried HelloFresh, please help the community by posting a review in the comments below.

What did you like and wasn't so great? Will you continue your subscription?

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